Abstract [en]

The Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) has been held in the Indian city of Jaipur for the past ten years. The event has grown spectacularly and has provided an arena for encounters between literary worlds. It has also become a focus of debate and friction within the sphere of Indian writing. This article is based on fieldwork at the JLF 2017.

Abstract [en]

Scholarly attention regarding the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has mainly concentrated on so-called Russian propaganda, directed both towards Russian-speaking populations and the international public, but less attention has been paid to the management of information from Ukraine. In this chapter is proposed that the conflict between Ukraine and Russia has engaged an entirely new set of actors engaged in the management of information, most notably from PR and nation branding activities, as well as journalists, oligarchs and various individuals with an interest in Ukraine’s international image. These new actors bring with them competences, ideologies and practices from their field of origin which impact on the practice and expressive character of information warfare. In this chapter we analyse three domains of communication used by Ukraine to address external audiences; the Ukraine Crisis Media Centre (UCMC), the English language news channel Ukraine Today and the fact checking website StopFake. With a focus on both individuals as well as the institutions they represent, this chapter explores the way in which actors in Ukraine have attempted to shape the content of the messages communicated.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages

Keywords

National Category

Media Studies

Research subject

Critical and Cultural Theory

Identifiers

urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-28441 (URN)

Projects

Nation Branding

Note

Nation-branding is a dynamic and rapidly developing practice promoting or readjustingimages of a nation-state for tourists or investors. New, postcolonial nation-statesseem to have a particular need to build new images of themselves in the eyes of thewider world. However, since they have a short history of sovereignty, these statessimultaneously need to build social solidarity and community at home if they are toform the basis needed for building a nation. This article takes its departure in this tensionand addresses three themes that need further theorizing due to the fact that thepractice has still to find its form: agency, audience and identity. These themes are discussedin relation to the branding efforts of Ukraine over the past decade. It is concludedthat, today, nation-branding campaigns are orchestrated by domestic PR agencies (as opposed to the previous dominance of British agencies); that the domesticaudience is taken into consideration in ways different from earlier branding campaigns;and that the question of identity construction is more complex than previouslythought. The Ukrainian case also highlights how vulnerable nation-branding efforts are to domestic political changes.

Abstract [en]

In post-liberalised India, the vast population is regarded as an enormous resource to be exploited as labourers, consumers or for their knowledge. A feature of the new media economy is that newspapers, mobile phones and TV shows are not exclusively produced for the better-off among an urban middle class and, furthermore, that the mass media are increasingly making use of ‘common people’ and their lives in a multitude of places as media content. The subject of this article is whether or not this obsession with the population should be urging us to rethink the Indian media landscape in analytical terms. ‘A public’, Michael Warner argues, is a reflexive relation among strangers, constituted by attention. If the Indian population is now addressed in various new ways, is it time to reconsider the old ‘truth’ that India is an unfit case for discussions about publics?